The best national scholastic tournament that I have ever
been to was the K-12 Nationals in Orlando, Florida in 2000. My elementary
school sent probably around twenty kids and parents. The fanciness of the hotel
blew my mind; there were two pools, all that the parents did was party; I was
super excited to draw a 987in the
first round; and we walked away with the second place team trophy in the third
grade section. Nothing would beat this fairy tale. The second best national
scholastic I have been to was in Columbus this past weekend. I loved being back
among all the people and all the places I had known growing up. Columbus was
already full of memories for me, and this tournament made it even more amazing.

Chess was important to me, but I combined it with vacation.
I flew in on Wednesday night to spend time with my old chess coach, Mark Morss,
who has known me from when I was six, and his wife Betty Morss, who had been my
fourth-grade teacher. On Thursday I walked over to my old elementary school,
Indianola Informal Elementary School, and said hi to my old teachers and
friends. It felt that nothing had really changed: Clintonville was still the
same; Cup of Joe, the Short North, and German Village were still there, and it
was really cool to walk down the street and feel like Columbus would always be
waiting for me.

As for the chess--my tournament was lackluster: I won the
first three games, lost a four hour grind to William Ong and drew the rest of
my games against weaker opponents. Regardless of what I said in my preview blog, I did come to this tournament
to win, but after the fourth game I thought, I now know what losing here feels
like. It wasn't so bad so I decided to relax and enjoy the experience. If I had
won the rest of my games I would have shared the giant tie for first, but that's okay. I got to be
excited for Kris Meekins who was tearing through the field with these fantastic
games. We had been friendly rivals back in the day. It was cool to see Kris as
well as Michael Vilenchuk, another guy I knew when I lived in Columbus, tie for
first. It's great to see that they are doing so well.

I want to also mention Lou Friscoe, who was a TD at the
tournament and who ran a lot of the tournaments that I used to play in when I
was a little girl. It was a nice surprise to see him again as well.

This was, in
retrospect, a heartbreaker for me, but I remember not feeling so down after I
lost since it had been a very interesting game.
1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5
4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.g3 Nf6 7.Bg2 Be7 8.0-0 0-0 9.Bg5 cxd4 10.Nxd4 h6 11.Bf4
Bg4 12.h3 Bh5 13.Nf5 Bg6 14.Nxe7+ Qxe7 This is all theory so far. I was
happy with this position; although my opponent has the two bishops, I have the
open position that I like and active pieces. 15.Be3
Now I am on my own. 15.Nxd5 Nxd5 16.Qxd5 (16.Bxd5 Rad8 17.Qb3 Nd4 18.Qc4 Nxe2+ This is
clearly not what White wants to do.) 16...Rad8 17.Qc4 Nd4 18.e4 b5 Black
is fine.15...Rad8 16.Bd4 Ne4 17.a3
This wastes time to me. 17.e3 looks more useful to me.17...Bh5
This is pretty dumb, because White
can end any threats with 18.g4, which is not really a weakening move. 17...Nxc3 This punishes White's slow play. 18.bxc3 (18.Bxc3 d4 19.Bd2 Be4) 18...Be4
This looks rosy to me.18.g4 Bg6 19.e3 f5!? I have mixed feelings about
this move, but I don't think it is bad. [19...Nxc3 20.Bxc3 Be4 This is probably
better than what I played, but it is less effective than on the previous moves
because ...d4 is no longer possible.]
20.Ne2 fxg4 21.hxg4 Qh4 22.f3 Nf6?
22...Ng3
23.Nf4 This is what worried me, but if the game had went like this I would have
won. 23...Nxd4!-+ 24.Nxg6 Nge2+ 25.Qxe2 Nxe2#23.Bc3 Qg5 24.Qd2 Rfe8
25.Bxf6?! I don't think this is necessary. 25.Nf4 Bf7 26.Rae1 I have a lot
of holes in my position and White keeps up the pressure. 25...Qxf6 26.f4
Be4 27.Bh3? This really surprised me and now I am better. The bishop is
really strong on e4.
27...d4
I open the position to work to expose the
White king position. 28.exd4 Nxd4 29.Nxd4 Rxd4 30.Qh2 Red8 31.Rae1 Bc6?
Oh
my goodness now my advantage is almost gone. I lost my sense of danger. 31...Rd2 32.Rf2 Qxb2 33.Bf1 Bc6 Black is winning.32.g5! Qf8I was
kicking myself and decided to pick the move that looked safest.
33.gxh6 gxh6
34.Re3 Kh8
34...Rd2 This is better. 35.f5
Surprisingly this is a
bad move, but as a practical chance it is great because suddenly the position
is really confusing, with the newly opened e5-h8 diagonal. 35.Qg3 covers
the g-file.35...Re8
35...Qf6! 36.Re6 Rg8+ 37.Bg2 Rxg2+ 38.Qxg2 Qh4!
This is what I had missed. 39.Rxc6 bxc6 40.f6 Rg4 41.f7 Rxg2+ 42.Kxg2 Black I'm
sure has a way to check and check and check until the queen gets to f8. 36.Rg3
Rde4It's totally unclear here. I stopped taking notation because of time,
and in the end I lost. 1-0

I was flattered to be mentioned in Melinda Matthews'
article. I'm sorry that I was late to the round because I would definitely have liked to
talk about the All-Girls' Nationals. I guess it did look strange for me to
leave for 10 minutes on move 2; that round was in the morning and I had to walk
10 blocks or so from my hotel to get there, so I probably needed to get settled
with my music and whatever to get in the right mindset to play. The tournament
itself was run nicely and efficiently, although the location of the event was
confusing. I could have used a map to get around the place; logistically, my
situation was chaotic. My hotel, the Westin, was a long walk away; I was trying
to eat on the cheap so food was hard to find; and my mp3 player ran out of
power halfway through the tournament and would not charge for some reason.
Alanna Katz, my awesome roommate who also had an awesome roommate, let me
borrow her iPod. I'm not familiar with trance-y kind of music, so I listened to
one playlist over and over to get used to it, and it worked. By the way, Alanna
coached a team of high school boys from Bishop Timon High School in Buffalo,
NY, and they won fourth place in the U800 section.

I was a little surprised to see that the Girl's Nationals
was being held concurrently with the High School Nationals. I disliked this
because it hurts a girl who would have liked to play in both events, so to me
it is implying that girls aren't strong enough to play in a national tournament
for both girls and guys. On the other hand, I understand that maybe some other
factors went into this decision such as money-I'm not entirely sure---and it
also has the benefit of bringing together the chess girls and chess guys (since
every open tournament is basically a guy's tournament). The tournament
directors should have organized a dance, and I'm only half-kidding.